Axes: A Quick Guide

Axe is an equipment used to chop woods, split woods and harvest timber. But in ancient times they were used for war, they were weapons. Axes are tools with handles used to split woods when the  axe penetrates the woods body. These axes used in splitting woods are deeper angled against those that cut woods being shallow wedge angle. Axes are made up of two parts primarily the axe head and the haft. The haft is sometimes called the handle and they were made of ash or hickory wood which are hard. The axe head have different parts as well such as the heel, toe blade, cheek, eye, butt and shoulder. The haft has parts as well such as the belly, grip, knob and throat. Click here to learn more about this.

 

There are several types of axe. The felling axe is designed to know down trees and these felling axes are extremely sharp with a blade that is thin and the head is slowly tapered in order to cut deep into the wood with every stroke of the best axe. They weight from 2-3 pounds and have almost 2-3 feet of haft. There is also the Hudson bay axes which are designed to trim the limbs of trees and other chopping works. It was developed in the 17th century and used by traders in the Hudson bay so as the name implies. It will make easy the chopping of wood into medium sized logs. Splitting mauls are used as secondary axes for delivering more forceful stroke into the wood without having the axe stuck in it. The haft is usually straight and will maul deeper into the wood split after delivering the first strike. Broad axes are used for hewing logs into beams. They are named so because of their large and long beards. The bits of these axes resemble like a chisel and allows the user to cut the rounded edges of the log in a precise manner while creating a flat face. The most common are the carpenter's axe which have long beards and this configuration allows the one who use them for more control. There are several variations to these axes such as the hatchet which was designed for camping and travelling. An adze is also a variation using a perpendicular head used to rip a level surface into something horizontal such as breaking up clay and rocks. Then there is the mortising axe used to create mortises. Axes used in battles are battle axe, tomahawk, throwing axe and many more. Visit http://www.ehow.com/how_2090708_sharpen-axe.html to read more about this.